ابحاث وملخصات

This paper explores aspects of promoting rural women’s leadership in producers’ organizations (POs). Despite the vast amount of work that women perform in the agriculture sector, their role remains largely unrecognized. The concerns and issues of women farmers are scarcely heard at the local, national and global levels. One reason for this silence is that there are not enough women in leadership positions to be able to represent the interests of rural women.
This shortage is compounded by women’s lack of voice in decision-making processes at all levels − from households to rural organizations − and in policymaking.

Policies affect every dimension of the institutional and legal context in which poor rural people pursue their livelihoods. They shape the world they live in and the economic opportunities open to them. This means that supportive policies can go a long way towards providing the conditions in which people can lift themselves out of poverty. Conversely, policies that do not create opportunities, or that exclusively reflect the interests of other economic players, can be an insuperable barrier or an unbridgeable gulf – roadblocks barring the way out of the poverty trap.

Climate change is the most compelling challenge facing the world today. It affects rural smallholders across the developing world, with effects that pose a grave threat to their own, and to the world’s food security.

The Latin America and the Caribbean region is a different place than it was 25 years ago. Today, every nation except Haiti is categorized as middle income. The region has reduced poverty by half, and the prevalence of hunger has declined by almost two thirds. More than half the adult population has attended secondary school.

Rural areas are changing too. They are no longer narrowly defined by their food production role, and key issues encompass many non-agricultural topics – including non-farm employment opportunities, especially for young people and women; migration and remittances; social protection; and the role of secondary cities. 

​This survey was commissioned by the Financing Facility for Remittances (FFR) of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and undertaken by Taylor Nelson Sofres, TNS-RMS, in the context of the African Postal Financial Services Initiative (APFSI). 

Like many development partners, IFAD has found that innovative free- standing development projects alone are not an effective vehicle for eradicating poverty at scale: they must be part of a longer-term process that can sustain learning and scaling up. 

​The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has highlighted a critical trade-off between agricultural development and climate change mitigation.

The Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) was launched by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in 2012 to make climate and environmental finance work for smallholder farmers. A multi-year and multi-donor financing window, ASAP provides a new source of cofinancing to scale up and integrate climate change adaptation across IFAD’s approximately US$1billion per year of new investments. The programme is joined up with IFAD’s regular investment processes and benefits from rigorous quality control and supervision systems.

ASAP is driving a major scaling up of successful ‘multiple-benefit’ approaches to smallholder agriculture, which improve production while reducing and diversifying climate-related risks. In doing so, ASAP is blending tried-and tested approaches to rural development with relevant adaptation know-how and technologies. This will increase the capacity of at least 8 million smallholder farmers to expand their livelihood options in an uncertain and rapidly changing environment.

Agriculture and food are critical areas in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – a global action plan aiming to guide the actions of governments, the private sector and a range of other stakeholders over the next fifteen years. The agrifood sector is a key area of investment for food security and nutrition.